PhotoSketch for SketchUp – 3D Buildings from Photos

April 30, 2009

It appears a very cool plugin for SketchUp for creating 3D buildings is about to be released. Someone yesterday spotted some YouTube videos showing tutorials of the new product. PhotoSketch is being released by BrainStorm LLC and looks like it could put a lot of power in the hands of model makers. The product enables you to create 3D buildings from photographs. You will need a few photos from different angles of the buildings. The software will then extract 3D data, and then let you apply the photos to the surface of the models as textures.
See one of the tutorials here to get an idea of how it works:

Similar custom technology has been used by the likes of Google and Microsoft to generate 3D models in an automated fashion using custom software and algorithms. This new tool will make it possible to generate similar models with a relatively small amount of manual effort. So far a price for PhotoSketchUp hasn’t been released. But, you most likely will also have to have SketchUp Pro (which costs $495) – unless the plugin works with the free version of SketchUp.
This story via DigitalUrban

About Frank Taylor

Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was released. He worked in 3D graphics for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank left in 2009 to circumnavigate the earth by sailboat as part of the Tahina Expedition.

The PhotoSketch plugin for Google SketchUp is now available online at http://www.brainstormllc.com
Be sure to check out the videos on the website.
The plugin currently runs under Windows Vista/XP. The Mac version will be available in September 2009. Download the free 30-day demo to try out all the cool features.

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